Category Archives: freedom

Ethan – Instilling a Passion for History in Future Generations

Posted on by

Our friend Ethan over at I Love Muzzleloading presented at the 2023 Kalamazoo Living History Show with some concrete ideas of how to share our passion for history and muzzleloading with others.

Here’s his full presentation . .  .

I really liked how Ethan grouped together the various aspects of the muzzleloader hobby – target shooters, woodsrunners, living historians, experimental archeologists, etc into a muzzeloading community.

Ethan has some great ideas for things we can all do to make sure our common passion can be passed down to future generations.

What do you think?

What will you do . . .

The Ballistic Efficiency of 4 Popular Lead Bullets for Hawken Muzzleloaders – from I Love Muzzleloading

Posted on by

Ethan – from the I Love Muzzeloading Podcast – recently published an excellent study on the Ballistic Efficiency of 4 Popular Lead Bullets for Hawken Muzzleloaders.   Since many of us buckskinners use blackpowder muzzleloaders for hunting, and almost all of us have or have had some variation of a Hawken rifle, I thought this would be excellent to share.

Here’s what Ethan had to say:

This test will be conducted at 50 yards with my Traditions St. Louis Hawken. The Traditions St. Louis Hawken has a 50 caliber 1:48 twist barrel and operates using a percussion lock and a no. 11 percussion cap. I’m using this rifle in this test because 50 caliber muzzleloaders are the most common muzzleloader on the market, and there are a wide variety of off the shelf, non custom, projectiles available for them.

 

We’ll be testing 4 projectiles in this test

 

.495 roundball, 184 grains

 

Hornady PA Conical, 250 grains

 

T/C Maxi Hunter, 275 grains

 

Hornady Great Plains Bullet, 385

 

Each of these projectiles is considered a “Traditional” projectile by many state hunting rules. They are all lead projectiles with no sabot, plastic, or jacket and their designs date back to the mid to late 19th century at the latest.

 

For powder in this test, I’m shooting each shot with 80 grains of Swiss 3F blackpowder measured by volume. Volume is the standard means to measure traditional “real” blackpowder in the field. Many shooters will use 2F blackpowder in their 50 caliber muzzleloaders, but by using this 3F Swiss brand blackpowder, we should be able to get optimum speed out of this rifle.

 

You can see all of the details in the video he posted to YouTube:

SAY NO TO INTERNET CENSORSHIP!!!

Posted on by

Huzzah to Wikipedia for blacking out their site to raise awareness about SOPA. Google has also blacked out their homepage image. I am sure there are more . . . The SOPA legislation would allow websites to be blocked in the name of copyright infringement.

But what does this mean?

What if you talk about a movie on your personal blog? Link to a YouTube video of an 80s song you love? Maybe …put up a movie quote or two? Are you infringing a copyright – can a movie studio or record company protest your “unfair” review or “use” of their content?

Could your website be blocked?

What if you were spreading a message that The Man didn’t like and you happened to include some of the above content? What a convenient way to silence your voice!

The problem with vague legislation is that it has a way of morphing into something far worse.

This is called unintended consequences . . .

The internet is the last bastion of freedom on our fair planet – where you can search for and find information about what’s going on around you and draw your own conclusions – without the bias of corporate news that is always pushing some agenda.

The internet allows you to talk to people that share your interests and beliefs, and let’s you be strengthened knowing that you are not the only one out there that feels the way you do.

Do what you can to keep the internet free – please sign the petition to block SOPA.

Once the shackles go on . . . it will become much harder to remove them.